Dragon casually tripled the intensity of Cherry's haki training. He even brought in some of his snipers to use Cherry as target practice, naturally all whilst Cherry had her physical senses deprived from her.
Cherry took the opportunity to get serious about training other aspects as well, such as her fusion devil fruit. Not wanting to be the only one to suffer, she also forced Cabernet and Perona to train their devil fruits. Robin at least had the sense to focus on her training without any nagging on Cherry's part.
Cherry had also asked the revolutionaries to keep an ear out for any underworld auctions selling devil fruit, as she would need one soon to push the 5th realm of her cultivation to perfection. She could reach the stage of perfection without one, but it would take much more time, though admittedly less time than if she didn't have the cultivation pills she made.
Speaking of her cultivation pills, her supply of them wasn't endless. So she had set up a greenhouse to grow the various plants she used to make them, as well as occasionally going out to hunt sea kings for their potent organs brimming with vital energy.
Underwater sea king fishing was a good way to practice puppeting her body in battle to counter the weakness of her devil fruit as well. She didn't want to have to seal her own devil fruit away when the time came to visit Fishman Island, which was deep beneath the ocean.
Cherry's pride wasn't worth all that much to her, but she wouldn't allow someone to take advantage of such a weakness to defeat her. They'd have to beat her fair and square, at least!
It wasn't until a month after returning to Baltigo that Cherry was informed of a devil fruit being sold off at a black market auction.
"So when and where is it going to be?" Cherry asked Sabo, who was the one to inform her.
"It'll be held in the country of Kano in West Blue in a few weeks. It's likely being hosted by the Chinjao Family, so it won't be easy to get in. Moreover we haven't gotten any details on what the devil fruit actually is. We suspect they don't know either, not all devil fruit are known afterall." Sabo explained.
"I can get in, super easy." Cherry boasted, knowing she only needed to ask old man Chinjao for an invitation. "Hm, a mystery devil fruit, huh? Guess it doesn't really matter for my purposes."
"What ARE your purposes if it doesn't matter what kind it is?" Sabo asked, raising an eyebrow.
"That's a trade secret~" Cherry smirked at him.
"Well, how are you planning on getting in since you're so confident? Would it be possible for you to bring in a representative from the revolutionary army as well? Sometimes these underworld auctions sell armaments in bulk or other things that would be of use to us." Sabo asked in a very serious straight to business manner.
"I could probably do that, but it counts as one of my missions in exchange for the training from Dragon!" Cherry said, refusing to do any favors for the revolutionaries for free.
"That's great!" Sabo smiled.
"Who are you planning to send with me? Koala, perhaps?" Cherry asked.
"I'll go myself." Sabo announced.
Cherry gave him a doubtful look.
"Why are you looking at me like that?! I used to be a noble, you know! I've been to auctions before!" Sabo defended himself against Cherry's silent accusation.
"Why not just send Koala? She's got a good head on her shoulders." Cherry said.
"..." Sabo pressed his lips into a thin line and looked away.
"You already asked her to go instead of you and she refused, didn't she?" Cherry spoke flatly.
"N- no…" Sabo weakly denied, clearly lying.
"Ugh, fine, whatever. Let's go." Cherry rolled her eyes.
…
On a ship that strangely looked like it was made of desserts. The figurehead was a cute red haired boy with sharp eyes and a scarf covering his mouth, and the sail had the name "Katakuri" written across it.
A muscular, shirtless man who looked quite similar to the figurehead of the ship was stoically facing forward with a ramrod straight posture.
Next to him was a thin woman with pale grayish skin and a long, pointy, red nose and long purple hair.
"Why did Mama have to send us for this? It's a waste of your talents, Onii-chan." The woman complained.
"I asked her to send us, Brulee. I have a feeling that someone 'interesting' will show up at this auction. Besides, only someone of our level in the family can bid on the devil fruit without an upper limit." The man spoke calmly.
"That's funny, Onii-chan! Who could possibly be interesting in your eyes?" Brulee laughed at the notion that anyone could enter the eyes of her beloved Katakuri onii-chan.
Katakuri didn't answer. He too found the notion to be unlikely, but his feelings about these sorts of things were rarely wrong.
…
On a Marine warship.
The sumo wrestler that carried a massive axe, Sentomaru, was annoyedly tapping his foot on the deck of the warship.
He was pretty pissed off that Vegapunk sent him all this way to attend an underworld auction. It was unbecoming of a man such as himself to lower himself to the level of those criminals.
However, it was Vegapunk's orders so he just had to suck it up.
Unfortunately he wouldn't be able to just take the fruit, at least not until the auction was over. Too many high profile individuals were expected to gather at this particular auction.
"Damned devil fruit nerd. I'm supposed to be your bodyguard, not a damned errand boy." Sentomaru complained to himself.
"Whatever, I'll just get the devil fruit by whatever means I am able to and go back. Easy enough. Hopefully I don't get outbid by some bigshot that I can't just confiscate from later…" Sentomaru muttered to himself.
…
In the air high above West Blue.
Cabernet was carrying Cherry, Robin, Perona, and Sabo in her ship form.
"It's been a long time since I was here. Feels just like it was yesterday though." Cherry said, looking down at the island nation Kano on the horizon.
"You've been there before?" Sabo asked curiously.
"Yeah, when I fixed Chinjao's head in exchange for learning Hasshoken." Cherry revealed casually.
"No wonder you were so confident in getting inside." Sabo sighed.
"Yep. I can't wait to see him and his boys again. See how they're doing strength wise. I reckon I can beat them now haha." Cherry spoke light heartedly.
"My experiences in Kano weren't so fun. I think I backstabbed at least three people here." Robin commented on her previous misadventures.
"They'd have to be pretty stupid to turn their back on YOU- ouch!" Perona said before yelping in pain.
One of Robin's arms had bloomed and gave her a small poke in the back with a rather scary looking dagger.
Perona glared at Robin who returned a friendly smile.
The dagger that Robin used just now was her very own Blood Bound Weapon.
What was particularly scary about this dagger is that she should summon it from any of her bloomed limbs. After a lot of practice, she was even able to bloom a few duplicates of the dagger like her own body parts.
Doing so consumed her vital energy, though, so she couldn't create the dagger duplicates infinitely.
Kano was soon directly below them, so Cabernet rapidly started to descend.